


an age unlike our own

by Casylum



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: F/F, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 13:48:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13436055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Casylum/pseuds/Casylum
Summary: Zeus miscalculated when he made the Amazons.





	an age unlike our own

**Author's Note:**

> >   
>  I declare  
> That later on,  
> Even in an age unlike our own,  
> Someone will remember who we are.  
> 
> 
> ― Sappho 

i.

~~~

Zeus miscalculated when he made the Amazons.

Creating something to lead humanity back towards the path of effortless goodwill was well-intentioned, but the effects of Ares' influence would always linger in their hearts, and with it, the uniquely human ability to resent those who differ from themselves. Even—perhaps especially—if that difference is less in appearance and more in physical ability. The Amazons, statuesque messengers of peace, could also kill an armed man blindfolded and barehanded, and the humans they walked among were all too aware of that fact.

Add to that the Amazons' unwillingness to serve as an eternal, passive beacon for humanity's increasingly grey morality, and, well...

He honestly should have seen it coming.

~~~

Antiope was never meant to be a general.

Back and back and back again, before humanity soured anew and the Amazons realized they could do more as protectors than servants, Antiope was a stablehand, responsible for the care, training, and health of a whole legion's billet of horses. Her work was good, honest, and exhaustive in a way that felt rewarding, rather than like drudgery.

Hippolyta worked alongside her, at least in the physical sense, but in the quiet hours, when the light of the sun dimmed to deep purple and gray, supplemented by the soft flickering gold of torch- and candle-light, she was a poet, spinning verses out of the complex, thorny language of the people they lived among, mixing in the softer sighs of the eastern continent, the rapid-fire bursts of the nomadic tradesmen that traversed the sea to the south, the guttural growls of the horse clans of the northern steppes.

They were happy there, Antiope and her nearest-sister, content in who they were and how they lived, fulfilling their divine roles of their existences as fully and completely as possible.

And yet...and yet.

Antiope hungered for more: to not just care for the horses under her charge, but to ride them, travel away from the legions and the training grounds she and Hippolyta were bound to, visit the homelands of the people she met as they passed through the camp, see the wonders captured in Hippolyta's words with her own eyes, instead of simply the eyes of her heart.

So it was that, in the end, it was the very fullness and completeness of self that had first separated the Amazons from their human brethren that led them to realize the restrictions of their existence and, when Zeus' original creations attempted to pen them into boxes which were too small a fit, what prompted them to rebel.

~~~

ii.

~~~

It goes, says Phillippus, tucking the sheets in around Diana five thousand years after the fact, like this:

~~~

On the outskirts of the territory held by the legions, on land that was not quite theirs and not quite anybody else's, sat a small inn. Consisting of a main room divided from the kitchen by a wall, and an upstairs that boasted four rooms centered around a cramped staircase, it, in itself, was nothing special.

The owner of the inn, an Amazon called Aella, was a warm and welcoming woman, and would often host those who could not find or afford places of their own in her stables, taking payment in the form of work, song, or simply gratitude.

During the winters, when campaigns and war were broken off so that both sides could focus on the all-consuming task of surviving, she hosted Hippolyta and others of her ilk, the space in the stables and above the inn stuffed full of bards, scholars, poets, and artisans, human and Amazon alike, all of them circling 'round the great central fireplace of an evening, and spinning out the tales that shaped the people gathered there and the world around them.

It was there, in the flickering half-light of a dying fire, that Menalippe first saw Antiope, leaning quietly against the back wall, eyes closed and hair shining a dull gold against the dark wood of the inn.

~~~

"Was it love at first sight?" asks Diana, eyes wide as she watches the shadows of Phillippus' fingers dance across the wall.

Phillippus laughs. "No, daughter-of-my-heart, it is never that simple. Even your mother and I, who have known each other since the dawn of our people, did not come to like—not even love!—one another until long after we came to Themyscira."

"Why not?"

"Your mother says it's because I was too stubborn to see what was in front of my own nose," Phillippus says, shaking her head with a click of her tongue, "Whereas I say it's because she was too busy fighting for all of us to take a minute to think about herself."

She looks down at Diana, this little girl growing slowly through the millenia, and smiles. "But one day, perhaps not the same day, we both looked up at each other, and something...shifted. Now here we are.

"And so it was for them."

~~~

She did not speak to her that first night, did Menalippe, nor the night after that, or the night after that.

In fact, it wasn't until spring, when the snows melted in a rush of mud and spreading green, and Menalippe had to return to her own place, far beyond the legion camp, that she caught Antiope on the central stairs of the inn, pulling on her cloak as the dawn filters through the trees outside.

"Will you return?"

Antiope stops, startled, hands caught on the edge of her hood.

"Pardon?" she says, and one of those hands goes to pull her long braid over her shoulder.

"Will you return?" Menalippe repeats. "When the snows come, and the fighting stops, will I see you again?"

Antiope blinks, shifts on her feet. A blush seems to be rising on the edge of her cheeks. "I...I was not aware that I had been seen," she says finally, awkward in a way that implies she's not used to it, "Let alone seen enough to be missed."

Menalippe can feel her own blush crawling up the sides of her neck. "Missed and more," she says, then adds in a rush: "If you were amenable. If you would permit it."

Antiope climbs the two stairs that separate them, cloak swinging. Menalippe finds herself focusing on small, insignificant things, like the exact gold of her hair, the fine lines by her eyes, the shape of her jaw, and all the while her blush climbs higher.

"I would be missed and more by one such as you," Antiope says when their feet are level, her head tipping back so that she can meet Menalippe's eyes. They have dropped to a whisper, and she cannot, for the life of her, figure out why. "Only give me a name, and I will do the same for you."

"You mean you do not—," Menalippe starts, and then flushes all the way through as Antiope smiles.

"Knowing and giving are two different things," Antiope murmurs, "and I would be given this, if I can."

"Menalippe," says she, "and you—"

"Antiope."

~~~

"So it went," says Phillippus, carding her fingers through Diana's hair, "that Menalippe went her way, and Antiope her own, but both of them held the other in their hearts. It wasn't love, not yet, simply—"

"Friendship," Hippolyta says from the doorway, hair a honey-warm tangle down her back, gilded by the torches in the hall.

"Precisely," Phillippus says, and Diana murmurs sleepily between them.

~~~

A year on, after the warmth of summer has come and gone and come again, Amazons near and far are rife with tension. Reports brought to Aella's inn all speak of the same thing: increasing mistrust from the humans they serve, increasing indifference from the gods who created them.

Somehow, whether from the lure of her talent, the strength of her character, or the faith of her sisters, Hippolyta is in the middle of it, Antiope at her side. They hold meetings, form councils, send messengers riding hard and long down the length of the known world, calling in any and all who will come.

The first Great Gathering of the Amazon nations happens not at Aella's inn, with its proximity to the war camp where Antiope serves, but on the slopes of Parnassos, above Delphi, in the slackening heat of early fall.

Hippolyta serves as the representative for Antiope and her near-sisters from the mountains north of Olympus, alongside Phillippus from the south, Euboea from the deserts beyond the sea, Hellene from the islands of the Mesogeios, Penthesilea from the western ranges, and Acantha from the northern steppes, under whose banner Menalippe marches.

They talk, debate, revel, reconnect, discuss.

Io lays her spears at the feet of Clio, who takes them up with tears in her eyes even as she lays hers down in return, only to be followed by Iphthime and Anaya, and Menalippe catches Antiope's gaze over the light of the celebratory bonfires, her cheeks warm with heat from within rather than without.

They don't meet, however, until the vote comes down and the decision is made. It is the first time Hippolyta is called Queen; Antiope, General; Menalippe, Senator.

The first, but not the last.

~~~

"Hippolyta sends her regards." Four months into this fight, they are in a tent on a cliff by the sea. Antiope is in full armor, the metal glinting in the sun. She bows as she speaks, fist to heart.

Menalippe mirrors her, armor heavy on her shoulders. "As does Acantha."

"And Mína?" Antiope asks, stepping closer, out of the sun. "May I have her regards as well?"

"All that and more, Annáki." Menalippe smiles, and meets her in the middle.

~~~

"Antiope?" Her voice is soft, floating in the twilight. They're three years in, on guard at the west side of the Thessaloniki camp, swords loose in their scabbards.

"Hmm?" Antiope stretches next to her, sinking down with one leg held straight out, carefully not blocking her legs.

"Do you ever wonder what the gods think of what we're doing?" Menalippe asks, looking briefly down at the gold of Antiope's hair before flicking her gaze back towards the empty plain in front of them.

"I do not," Antiope says firmly, "for if the gods cared at all about the Amazons, this war would never have begun." She rises, and stands half-towards Menalippe. "Why do you worry?" Concern creeps into her voice.

Menalippe sighs. "We are winning this war, but we are losing ourselves, both in mind and in body."

"Mína—" Antiope starts, before Menalippe cuts her off.

"I would not lose you," she says in a rush, "Not for all the victories in the world. Yet I fear—how can I not?—that the gods have decided against us, that I will lose you surely as we will lose this—" she gestures at the land surrounding them, at the world they inhabit "—and there will be nothing left for us but the mindless bliss of Elysium."

"Mína..." Antiope repeats, before falling helplessly silent.

The light fades. The plain stays still.

~~~

Antiope lays her spears at Menalippe's feet after six years of fighting, just weeks before they go to Themyscira, before Menalippe has a chance to do it herself. The sun is high in the sky and the battle-churned mud of Tripolitsa is still smeared across her face and weighs on the strands of her hair, giving visual evidence of the exhaustion they're all feeling.

"Mína—Menalippe," Antiope says, the smile on her face cutting through the grit of war, and suddenly, it doesn't matter that Menalippe hasn't slept in four days, or bathed in eight, or that neither of them has seen peace in six very long years. She feels as light as air. "Would you do me the honor—"

"Yes, yes," Menalippe says over-top of her, and throws her own spears down, her knees following shortly after. She looks into Antiope's eyes, and finds nothing but light. "Antiope, would you do me the honor—" and here Antiope takes it up with her, the two of them speaking in unison "—of taking up my spears, of walking with me where'er I go, of staying where I stay, living where I live, loving as I love, until such time as the sun goes out and night is all that is?"

"Yes," Antiope says, and kisses her as the trumpets sound the advance and the line breaks around them.

~~~

Themyscira is, quite literally, a godsend.

They're boxed in near Velies and being pushed back down the peninsula, towards Velanidia and the cold embrace of the Mesogeios, the whole of the Amazon host whittled down to just over twenty thousand. Menalippe wakes and sleeps to the sound of drums and the sound of an army on the move, the tension of imminent demise thick and heavy in the air.

Antiope runs ragged back and forth from Hippolyta at the backline—closest to the encroaching human force—to Hypsiple at the front, squinting at the light reflecting off the sea at the edge of the horizon.

"If only we had shipwrights and a few months," Menalippe says humorlessly one night, partially deafened by the non-stop rumble of carts, never mind that she's sitting on the bench of one now. "They wouldn't have to kill us, we'd simply sail off and become someone else's problem."

Egeria snorts from where she's riding alongside. "Or drop the seas long enough for us to cross, no need to involve boats."

"Especially since half of us have never seen the sea," Euboea adds, "Though we are about to get rather closer to it than I would like."

"Take enough hyssop down with us, and we'll be prepared enough," Nione says dryly from the back of the cart, and that does it.

Menalippe can feel the laughter bubble up, shaking her shoulders before it rolls out into the night air. Euboea breaks a moment later, Egeria and Nione not far behind, the four of them laughing under the light of the moon as their doom quick-marches behind.

Maybe, she thinks much, much later, maybe that's what convinced them to do it, because when they reach Velanidia, it's to the sight of a miracle, a long mile-wide stretch of land plunging straight into the Mesogeios, leading them away from the army at their back and into the unknown.

Hippolyta comes down from the hills once all of the Amazons are in Valanidia proper, and meets with the same council that set them on this course to begin with, Antiope by her side and Menalippe behind Acantha.

"We cross," says Phillippus, followed by Euboea, Hellene, Penthesilea, and Acantha.

"We cross," says Hippolyta, the final vote, the Queen's vote, and so they do.

When the last of the backline leaves the shores of Valanidia's beaches, the Mesogeios rushes in, licking the heels of Hypsiple herself and closing the way to their enemies.

"Forward it is," mutters Orana from Menalippe's side, and so they go, for three days and three nights, the remnants of the Amazon nations walk forward into the unknown until, on the morning of the fourth day, the call goes up.

"Land!" shouts Artemis from atop her horse.

"Land!" Mnemosyne calls down the line.

"Land!" Iphthime and Anaya yell in unison.

"Land!" Menalippe almost whoops when the call comes to her, and she twists to watch it continue, all the way down to Phthia at the rear of the column.

~~~

Settling on the island they were led to is the work of moving into the sprawling stone buildings that hug the top of the white crags like they've always been there, and always will be. The island is uninhabited, as far as can be determined, yet is fully and plentifully furnished, from housing to clothes to books to food and drink.

With the lack of a clear sign of just who had blessed them with this refuge, the name wavers between "Paradise" and the name of the plain where Aella's inn had been, and the idea of the Amazons as a single, unified nation had begun: Themyscira.

Menalippe sings again, songs of love and loss and freedom, and Antiope, instead of lurking at the back until her performance is over and disappearing, comes home with her, their spears leaning together just inside the doorway for all to see.

They are, by the grace of the gods, happy.

~~~

"And so," Phillippus says, on a different night, Diana now old enough to train with her near-sisters, "the Amazon tribes of the world become the Amazons of Themyscira, protectors of the world of men, rather than servants to it."

Diana blinks sleepily at her, already halfway in Morpheus' hands. "And Menalippe and Antiope?"

"They got the chance to live," Phillippus says, smoothing Diana's hair back from her forehead. "We all did."

~~~

iii.

~~~

Centuries later, when Antiope falls to the weapons of a world grown beyond them, the sand of Themyscira stained a sticky red-black, Menalippe shatters, all the pieces of herself breaking around this one, all-consuming absence.

She leads the pall bearers later, after Diana has left, her near-sisters pale and stone-faced behind her as they bring down the dead back to the place where they left for Elysium. Her voice goes up in song, the ancient words coming all too easily after years of lying dormant.

The Amazons of Themyscira do not have funeral traditions; they have never before had a funeral. So they borrow from before, songs of war and loss and strength gathered from all the disparate tribes and outposts, rising into the night on the steady beat of drums.

Hippolyta sings, their Queen alone and backed by fire, saying "How brave, how noble, how very much they are missed". Her eyes are on Menalippe as she sings, and their tears are almost in unison.

At dawn, the beach is still full, the women of Themyscira keeping vigil until the last of the pyres burn down. Menalippe's at the tide-line, the salt of the sea itching on her legs as it drys, hyssop from the baskets being passed around braided into her hair.

The sun rises as it did so many years ago, bright and warm. Menalippe can almost feel the memory of Aella's floor under her feet, hear the swish of Antiope's cloak.

It's spring, and Themyscira is green in the sun.

~~~

Menalippe was never meant to be a general.

But, then again, no one is.

**Author's Note:**

> Please, join me as I make shit up wildly and without abandon.
> 
> Where is Themyscira? In ancient history (spelled Themiscyra)? 41° 12′ 0″ N, 36° 43′ 0″ E (no joke). In comics, as we speak? The Bermuda Triangle (I'm...sure, fine, okay). In _Wonder Woman (2017)_? Somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean off the coast of Turkey. In this? Somewhere in the triangle of the Mediterranean between Crete, Ios, and Kithira.
> 
> Parnassos (Mount Parnassus) is a real mountain, and supposedly a haunt of Dionysus, the Muses, and Apollo. Delphi and her attendant Oracle really are located just off the western side. Thessaloniki, Tripolitsa (Tripoli), Velies, and Velanidia are real as well.
> 
> Mesogeios is the Ancient Greek name for the Mediterranean.
> 
> A brief key, in terms of Amazonian usage of kinship terms (that I have made up, forgive me): 
> 
> ― Sister: any other Amazon  
> ― Near-sister: A friend, a member of the same tribe.  
> ― Nearest-sister: The closest of confidantes, the best of friends  
> ― Spear-sister/"tak(-e/-ing) up my spear"/trad(-e, -ed, -ing) spears": married, bonded, in a committed relationship
> 
> When I say spear, please know I mean closer to javelin, or something no more than three to four-and-a-half feet long and meant to be either thrown or fought with at a slightly longer range than a short-sword. They aren't laying down twenty-footers during their declarations of love (can you imagine).
> 
> Are Mína and Annáki the proper Ancient Greek diminutives of Menalippe and Antiope? Who knows. If you or someone you know speak/s Modern Greek and can give any advice, I'm all ears.
> 
> For reference as to my inspiration for Amazonian funeral rites, please see Xena: Warrior Princess, and listen to [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-StkcpBXg8).
> 
> Ancient Greek funerals (or so I gathered from Wikipedia) concluded with the mourners and major household objects being washed in seawater and hyssop.


End file.
